A Game And A Chat: The End Of GDC Spectacularmathon

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IT. IS. OVER. Done. Slain. Dead. Six feet under. Sleeping with the daises. Pushing up fishes. We gathered one last time for a reflection on this year’s whimsical game dev summer camp, its most important moments, and where the gaming industry is headed as a whole. Part one’s guests include Papers Please creator Lucas Pope, Depression Quest creator Zoe Quinn, and Boon Hill dev Matt Ritter. Part two, meanwhile, brings in such luminaries and champion toe fighters as Gone Home writerly brain man Steve Gaynor, Kotaku features editor Kirk Hamilton, resident Vlambeer madman JW Nijman, Action Henk‘s Kitty Calis, and RPS god heroes Cara Ellison and Hayden Dingman. The end result? A loud, exuberant, exhausted goddamn disaster. Beaming agreements, screaming arguments, and confusing argreements. Also lots of people walking into our room randomly.

Among many other things, we talked everyone’s favorite GDC moments, diversity in the gaming industry, the virtual reality fuuuuuuuture’s growing pains, my Lost Levels talk, and what happens after you release a game like Papers Please or Depression Quest. Settle in with some popcorn and a hideous, burbling soda and tune in below.

Tremendous thanks to Unwinnable for hosting us on this occasion. They are currently Kickstarting an admirably weird, offbeat weekly games/pop-culture publication that should probably be of interest to scholarly RPS types like yourselves.

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Might as well put it out there: Nathan and I wrapped last night's stream and immediately started making a list of improvements for E3. Some small (microphones are cool), some larger (I can't give everything away).

Rest assured, we'll be coming to you live from someone's bed at E3 and...well, probably other places.

Glad you all enjoyed these so much, despite some amateurish errors. We're just learning how to do this whole dumb thing--writing's obviously our first love. It's been a ton of fun though.

Anyway, Nathan and I will be back to streaming next Friday night as usual. See you all then!

Ok, for equally judgmental fairness, seen as I let myself get drawn into it before, most of the annoying things Nika did in the second video, Matt Ritter did more obviously in this one. And he added a few unwise things of his own in slightly unaware sincerity. But that aside, lovely to hear from those people!

Especially interested in the carpet dude (Mahdi Bahrami) and his stuff.

Given the popular success of this creative, intimate format, is it possible that we will see the return of the Roundtable-on-Bed as part of the (presumed) E3 coverage? Accordingly, will it feature the likes of Bobby Kotick (Activision), Andrew Wilson (EA), and Strauss Zelnick (T2)?

Will they be wearing socks? Will it be Kotick perched on the edge of the bed, unblinking eyes fixed on the camera like his namesake from Twin Peaks?

Might as well put it out there: Nathan and I wrapped last night’s stream and immediately started making a list of improvements for E3. Some small (microphones are cool), some larger (I can’t give everything away).

Rest assured, we’ll be coming to you live from someone’s bed at E3 and…well, probably other places.

Glad you all enjoyed these so much, despite some amateurish errors. We’re just learning how to do this whole dumb thing–writing’s obviously our first love. It’s been a ton of fun though.

Anyway, Nathan and I will be back to streaming next Friday night as usual. See you all then!

Possibly by accident, these are some of the most fun little pieces of conference coverage I think I’ve seen.
You get people wanting to be all fancy and professional, but 1) you can get that anywhere/it’s what we see all the time in other media and 2) if you don’t nail it (requires loads of money and experience) it somehow comes off worse than rank amateur efforts.

There’s some danger of it becoming an overly chummy, in-crowd love in. But in general I say stumble on to genuine novelty and amusement.

Guys, these talks are very interesting, but I (and probably other people also are) unable to sit and watch the whole thing in front of the PC. In addition, the video content itself is not very appealing.
So- is there a chance of these making their way into the podcast?

That’s one of our plans for the future, yes. I want to keep doing videos because faces are neat and I like attempting to fit as many people as possible onto new and interesting beds, but next time we’re going to publish pure audio as well. Options! You will have them.

Big thank you for Nathan, Hayden, Cara, and John as well as their special guests for doing these videos. It was really nice putting faces (and perhaps glimpses of personality) behinds the games we play/articles we read.